Let’s go back to the days; we think we have lost…

Let’s go back to the school days

I stood beside the old black painted Iron Gate. The wind was blowing gently as if it’s playing the background music of my old school days. I remembered the times we used to run our fingers through the gate grills while waiting for our parents. Long time ago we were labeled as a student of this school. It’s the place that laid the foundation of my present and future. The one which taught me to be good, do good and what’s good. Years back in 2004 I left my school as a proud student, but still it’s a special feeling when I pass nearby my school. Let’s go back to the days; we think we have lost… The time we loved to and used to enjoy rain without umbrellas!!!
Friends, Teachers, Classrooms, Playground, Canteen, Library, Exams, Notebooks, Textbooks, Homeworks, Monday mornings, Cricket, Lunch breaks, Fights and many more things that won’t comeback again.

The bell rings at 9.25. Most often that’s really embarrassing because at that time we’re busy with completing the 1st period’s home work. Then Prayer followed by pledge. Pledge is said in such a way that the hand comes down regularly for writing and it holds the pen throughout the pledge (I don’t remember any lefthanders in our batch). There’s a huge sigh of relief when someone say that the teacher is on leave. Then it’s fun time and we got more time to complete “tomorrow’s” home work. Next scene – After 10 minutes the teacher teaching at the class next to us comes and asks: “What’s happening here? I can’t teach due to your noise. Who is the class leader? Note down the names of those who are talking.“. After 10 seconds of pin-drop silence we’ll be back in form again and will behave in such a manner that the teacher will come again and again to tell the same thing!! The most horrifying moment is that the Maths teacher who’s supposed to come to the class at the last hour of the day comes to our class with the attendance register. 60 seconds for Maths HOME WORK!!

The assemblies were considered as time to stand in sunlight for vitamin D. The school management must surely want us to learn many other important things on assemblies other than what they used to tell us in those sunny days – discipline may be one among them!

Exam days were very religious for many of us. Lines on forehead were directly proportional to the difficulty of the subject. We used to enter the exam hall only after the 2nd bell and that too on teacher’s final call for writing the exam. Once we enter the class and took our seats, the teacher taps on the desk twice and says “stop talking”. Last minutes of Language exams were very crucial because our imagination becomes very active at that time – additional sheeett!!

Sports day, Arts day and other competitions were conducted every year. The talents got revealed and appreciated on such occasions.

We had a pretty large play-ground in our school. When we were LP school students, there were some natural caves in one side of the play ground and the PT hours were really a fun time in those caves. Paper ball cricket was the most popular game at that time, even at 10 minutes interval time we used to play it. On exam days we used clip board as bat otherwise our hands.

Does anyone remember the computers that ran on Windows 98 in our computer lab? Does anyone remember the games Road-rash, Prince, Dave etc. and also that donkey-car game? I think they were more entertaining than the Hitman game with 3D effects. Other than the games we worked on MS-Word till 8th or 9th standard. We were taught QBasic also, but still from 3rd to 10th two questions appeared in all computer exams – difference between RAM and ROM, explain CPU (or the brain of computer).

Canteen – It had very small menu with 5-8 options, but that menu was enough for the entire students of the school. At first it was at the south-western corner of the school near the Basket ball ground and later got shifted to the place near the chemistry Lab. Unfortunately our old canteen and the basket ball ground don’t exist now. Please forget about the “south-western corner”, I don’t know how to point out that location. Even now I can point out only 3 locations – Indian Ocean, Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal – that we used to mark along beside the INDIAN MAP in geography examinations!

Note books and text books – Most of our teachers used to give us notes on their subjects. They want to us to copy down all those data and learn well. Sometimes we may be unable to write those notes due to illness, leave or some other assignments and we leave space to complete it later. Finally when the teacher checks our note books to find whether it is complete or not, we just tear off those blank pages that we left earlier and show it :P. Drawing was in the timetable till UP school, after that the last pages of notebooks and history text books became our drawing books.

Now about our Teachers, what to say? We got the BEST tutors and without them we couldn’t have reached anywhere. There’s a quote: “If you can read this, then thank your teacher”.

At 3.30pm, the bell rings for the last time – it’s the time for National Anthem. After that we all leave our class room in Queue. Finally windows, doors and gates get closed and silence spreads over the school compound. Will those days happen again? We know the answer. The innocence of those school days will never come back. We all have got miles to go before we sleep!

When we look at the sky we see the clouds, birds, trees and may be some electric lines too. There was a time that we used to interpret the clouds into pictures and sound of birds to words. Seasons change, we also. Life is like a photograph focused on our desires, dreams and ambitions. We have our school days captured somewhere inside our minds as beautiful photographs, the memories that we painted together with our friends. There will be a note on all medicines like “Best Before…”, but this one doesn’t have any, because this is the BEST FOREVER…